Since I am trying to ignore the fact that we move in three days and hence should be packing, I spent a fair chunk of this morning planning Sophie's first week or so of homeschooling for the new school year. We're almost finished reading The Magician's Nephew, so the description of the creation of Narnia seems like a good launching pad for an exploration of various creation myths. It also leads into learning about our own solar system, and reading about how scientists think our universe was formed. Plus Soph wants to make the obligatory model of the solar system. So we went to the library and took out a whole stack of books : some creation myths, and some books about the solar system and the beginning of the universe. Plus a book about the sun : lots of cool (and easy!) experiments for us to do. I just need to look for some related poetry. Should be easy enough to find, the subject range is broad enough! I brought an anthology of poetry back from England as one of the kids' gifts - I picked it up in the gift shop at the Tate Modern and couldn't resist it - and, somewhat to my surprise, they love it. Ems and Soph have actually been memorizing poems. Not my idea at all, memorizing seems awfully Victorian to me ... but I guess the key to their enjoyment is that the initiative came from them, rather than from me. Anyway, since then I've been trying to make an effort to include more poetry in our lives. It's been something I've neglected for the last while.

I love, love, love the library. It always amazes me that I can just walk in there and get everything I need, for free! In some ways it was kind of silly to get the books today - we'll have to pack and unpack the darn things! But since the big kids go off to school on Monday, I want Sophs to have a really fun start to the week, so that she doesn't miss them too much. So I really needed to get everything set up today : there certainly won't be time on the weekend.